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10 Dec 2016 1:24:10am

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I cannot agree with this. Attempts to find the origins of ethics seem to be attempts to define valid epistemology for ethics. With all due respect to Professor Phillip Kitchener, his attempt to find an origin of ethics in the problem solving skills of our ancestors is simply contrary to my limited knowledge of ancient culture. Ethics as a social technology is a bankrupt as all other sources of ethics, including divine revelation and naturalism.

I spent a few years studying theology. Within biblical studies section, I was forced to an imperfect understanding of the biblical writer’s culture, especially, when studying the Pentateuch. Egalitarianism was nowhere to be seen. The group coming together to solve issues seems to be a modern projection on the ancient past. Nothing like modern democracy existed, even in ancient Athens (where only about 10% had a say). The divine authority is usually vested in a person (like a monarch) or a tribe (like the ancient Israelites), never in prepositions like ethical rules.

If those rules came from God, they were selectively applied. The Ancient Israelite divine laws relating to jubilee seem to have never applied. The only mention of abortion in the Bible (Numbers 5:11-28) came from the Lord and is thankfully forgotten.

The problem with Kitchener is the same problem I have with so called Biblical ethics. Both project the modern world back on to the ancient world. Both see modern ethical views as normative. Both fail to be critical of our current views. Both take a triumphalist approach to history meaning that both see the world better than in it past. An example is that both assume the current Western ethical tranquillity has nothing to do with the uneven distribution of resource between the ‘north’ and ‘south’. Finally and the most strangely, both do not look at modern ethical disasters like Hitler, Stalin or the Western support for Pol Pot. If they do, they try to blame those they disagree with. Apparently, Stalin’s naturalism has nothing to do with modern naturalism.